My 1999 Windstar transmission just failed. I was idling at a stop light, then when I press the accelerator, I head a loud thud and then the vehicle felt like it was in neutral. I have no forward gears, just the reverse still works. So what ever happened with your Winstar?
It sounds like my transmission failure was the same. The shop took apart the transmission and found that the sungear (4" dia gear) sheared off a weld line to this pan-like part. I don't know the name of the part, it is shaped like a round pan with a hole in the center where the sungear is welded to it (could be the low drum you described). Looked like a pretty skimpy weld line for the amount of torque you would run through it to drive a vehicle.
I wonder how many other failures like this has happen? Potentially a crappy design?
My wife just had the same issue. She was at a traffic light, went to pull into the intersection and heard a loud thud. She was stuck (and lucky to not have been in an accident). I just had the transmission pulled apart and the the sun gear was separated from the drum at the weld point as described above.
I don't know much about transmissions, but this seems like a flawed design (a fair amount of torque on a welded part ?!?!). Is this common or specific to Ford and/or the Windstar.
Ford doesn't have any TSB's on this, but I have found a number of posts around the internet with similar symptoms. You would think that this is a safety concern.
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